1.2.11-Sarah1281
Brick!Club 1.2.11 What He Did Even when Valjean is plotting to steal from the bishop he is STILL described as gentle. I’m really noticing a distinct show-tell disagreement going on. I guess that one of the parts of the cleaning luxury the women are allowed is the luxury of oiling hinges since the door swung open so silently. I wonder how the bishop would react if he woke up to find Valjean in his room (not that I’m thinking of a certain fanfic on the matter…) Reading translations that are determined to come off like they were actually written in the 1860s even though they can translate however they want can sometimes teach you new words. Aperture, for instance, means opening. Ah, but when he pushes it open for the third time (why, exactly, does it take three tries to open a door? That seems rather inept) it makes a noise so it’s not well-oiled. Well, that’s the thing about luxuries. You cannot always indulge in them and they have better things to spend their money on than oil. But now I’m wondering, if the hinge only made noise on the third push, just how little Valjean had opened the door on those first two occasions. Valjean knows that he really should not be doing this if he feels like the hinge is literally Judging him. And yet he still proceeds. Of course, if he hadn’t then the clock would just pester him into trying again so he’s just saving time, really. Even though he’s currently in the process of going to rob the only person to ever really be nice to him, I still feel for him when he “halted, shuddering, bewildered, and fell back from the tips of his toes upon his heels.” It’s just…how does he even make it through his life if the slightest thing can bewilder him so strongly? I wish we had found out more about how his life in prison went (this time for a reason besides ‘because I want to know more about Toulon!Valjean’ and because I want to know if he was that bewildered and confused there). He did think about the crime but he’s seemed to have lost what control he had over it with the fact that he can’t think about anything but getting it done as fast as possible even with the fact he keeps thinking he’ll be caught. Even thinking he was caught, he couldn’t retreat. It’s interesting that he’s building up this whole chains of events in his mind with the bishop waking up, the two women shrieking, the town rising up against him (which, well, yeah they would), and the gendarmes taking him back to prison when he expects that the bishop will awake to find him about to enter his room. It’s a long way from going into someone’s room which is the only way to get out of his own room to having someone arrested for theft. But perhaps he’s counting on his past and yellow passport making people assume the (true) worst and drawing their own conclusions. I think his expectations about how the bishop will react say a great deal about what he thinks of the bishop. He doesn’t believe that the bishop really understands about him and has accepted and welcomed him anyway. How can he when no one else ever has? He’s already tried to explain that he’s a convict more than once because he can’t fathom that the bishop won’t reject him for it. It seems like he believes that the bishop knows he’s a convict but does not truly understand what it is to be a convict and what he is capable of the way that everybody else does. He sees the bishop as naïve and so once he’s proven wrong and Valjean acts like a convict he would turn out like everybody else. In light of this, no wonder he feels okay to steal from him. It’s little different than taking the four sous under false pretences from a woman who didn’t even realize he was a convict at all (I guess they had a veteran problem, too, if she looks at a clearly impoverished man and guesses that he is one). Oh, of COURSE the clouds parted and heavenly light shown down when Valjean was looking at the bishop. I wonder why it didn’t occur to him to get Valjean a nice blanket like it did Baptistine. Did he count on her doing this or realize that she had? I’m pretty sure he realizes he’s august, though, regardless of what the narrator says. And poor Valjean, just completely unprepared for the bishop even SLEEPING and terrified of it. He just can’t face this kind of goodness, so far removed from him, lost as he is within the darkness which apparently he had had no trouble maneuvering in when passing through the bishop’s room. Is the candlestick, which he seems not to have lighted, really for hitting people over the head with if they wake up? It’s a bunch of old people, I doubt he would have needed it. I feel like the most violent things in the presence of the most gentle would attack but Valjean doesn’t. He’s torn between kissing his brow and crushing his skull but he ultimately does neither, choosing the middle ground between greatest good and greatest evil at this juncture so not all hope is lost. I wonder what would have become of him had he actually killed the bishop. Assuming he wasn’t thrown back into prison for the crime, of course. And what would happen to his soul? Would he just be completely committed to evil after that? He never would be able to understand why and would stop trying to fight the darkness (and he must still be fighting, however feebly, or he would have immediately stolen the silver). He does take off his cap respectfully for the bishop and then when he decides to continue taking action, he refuses/cannot bear to so much as glance back and remind himself of the bishop. I wonder why he doesn’t bother worrying about the noise on his way out. Does he just need to get out of there as fast as possible? Is he just feeling overly confident now that he’s gotten this far and it was all too easy? And he didn’t even see if there was anything else to steal, he just grabbed the first thing he found. What if the first thing he saw was a basket of linens? Would he have left with just then? His first real premeditated crime really needs a lot of work but that’s probably a good sign. I would not be surprised if that woman who came to borrow money right before Valjean went to sleep told everybody and so the gendarmes were waiting right outside for just such an occurrence.